


Heat

by orphan_account



Series: Rush Summer [10]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Culture Shock, F/M, Rush Valley, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2014-03-04
Packaged: 2018-01-14 12:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1266997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lan Fan could stare at the yellow for an eternity, hungrily drinking in the colour like sunlight, like gold, like a dawn on a distant horizon setting the shore aflame. Not because she wants <em>Ling</em>—she can’t, <em>this one can’t</em>—but because at the end of days he must have seen her, exhausted and crumpled in on herself; must have gathered her into his arms or propped her up over his shoulder; must have carried her to this bedroom, the guest, the spare.<br/>Tucked her in amongst the blankets.<br/>Laid his jacket on top of her.</p><p>-------------------------------------------------------</p><p>Or, in which Lan Fan pretends that her spine is sword, Ling nearly topples over off of Lan fan's lap, and Ling's jacket get a piece of the hottest action this side of Xing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heat

**Author's Note:**

> The story so far: After Lan Fan's automail arm broke on a visit to Rush Valley, she and Ling have been stuck at Winry and Paninya's repair shop (with a ten-year-old apprentice named Akihi) while the arm is fixed. Two nights prior to this instalment, Winry and Paninya took the Xingese duo to a party wherein Lan Fan was attacked by a transphobic individual. Due to a series of hints, Lan Fan had come to suspect that Ling specifically brought her to Rush Valley for Winry to assist her - and after overhearing conversation between Paninya and Winry, these suspicions were confirmed. After Winry discovered that Lan Fan overheard the conversation, the two discussed Winry's intentions, and Winry agreed to treat Lan Fan as a person and not as someone needing help. Lan Fan kissed Paninya on a whim, prompting Paninya to take the kiss easily and talk to Lan Fan about identity, sexuality, and being okay with oneself, after which Lan Fan aided Paninya in starting to craft the new automail. Exhausted, Lan Fan fell asleep at the doorway only to awaken with Ling's jacket over her.
> 
> A gentle reminder that this is part of a series (and will not make sense if you haven't read Coal).
> 
> HERE WE GO. The turning point in the fic. From here on out we're pushin' up roses.
> 
> Well, not always. But y'know. A happy Lan Fan is a happy GC.

Lan Fan could stare at the yellow for an eternity, hungrily drinking in the colour like sunlight, like gold, like a dawn on a distant horizon setting the shore aflame. Not because she wants _Ling_ —she can’t, _this one can’t_ —but because at the end of days he must have seen her, exhausted and crumpled in on herself; must have gathered her into his arms or propped her up over his shoulder; must have carried her to this bedroom, the guest, the spare.

Tucked her in amongst the blankets.

Laid his jacket on top of her.

Her eyes widen. Rapidly she dips into the _chi_ while she curses herself for allowing her body to become so exhausted that she managed to pass out without attaining a safe location.

A memory slips unwarranted to the fore her mind to be examined briefly and discarded: During their short stay at an oasis in the Si Wong Desert, she had insisted on going onwards. “Just look! There’s still plenty of time before dawn, and I’m sure that we can make time!”

Her grandfather—her _shifu_ —had inquired of the then-foolish prince, who had nodded. “I trust Lan Fan!” he’d announced suddenly, and the next thing Lan Fan could recall was the rising sun bathing heat over their huddled forms, was the utter lack of shelter, was the sound of bandits awakening them as their horses whinnied in frantic protest at the theft.

Her _shifu_ had warned her, then. “You can push your body to its limit, and you need to be able to do so. But your mark is _always_ Prince Yao.” The weight of his hand had been consequential in its gravity on her shoulder. “Do you understand?”

She had bowed low at the waist until her spine ached. “Ensure his safety above all. Ensure his _safety above all_.”

Of course no assassins lurk in Rush Valley, considering that the main vehicle of the royal entourage remains in Central, but it’s fully possible that one of the rival Clans—those formerly atop the summit of the pecking order, whose matriarchs and patriarchs continue to oppose the sweeping reforms—could have gathered intel on his present location. And it’s just as possible that Ling could simply jump in trouble.

He does that sometimes.

He can handle himself, she knows, but the lingering screaming voice of her _shifu_ remains lodged in her mind.

She cannot rest.

 _Chi_. Ling. To her left.

To her _left_?

Motionless, she glances outwards from the corner of her eye. In a chair by her bedside he sits. Dozes, by the limp angle at which his head has tilted awkwardly to the side and by the palpable rising and falling of his chest. The rise and fall is reflected in the subtle shifts of his throat upon each cycle of breath; some hidden shard of her bites her tongue to avoid lunging forward and kissing him on the neck then and there.

Still, at the moment Ling is _safe_. Safe enough that Lan Fan feels comfortable relaxing back into the pillows. Safe enough that Lan Fan can lower her eyelids and allow her muscles to relax one by one. Uncoil. Utilising a technique taught to her by her grandfather, she rolls gently down the length of every muscle from the initial connection—from the nearest to her core that she can reach—to the furthest point outwards, such that the muscle stretches and settles, warm and half-melted, along her bones.

One by one she applies the technique to each last centimetre of her body, of her form, of all of her down to her soul bared in the open cage of her chest.

The tension ebbs from each loosening tendon and sinew, from her taut neck to her shoulder blades to the fingers of her right hand to her lower back to her thighs and knees and feet: She sinks into the mattress. The softness cradles, buoys her. Though she perhaps would be bare without the coveralls, in merely her wrappings and long undergarments beneath, under the cover of the jacket she has never felt more clothed.

Swaddled in warmth. The usual heat of Rush Valley has given way to a striking sense of warmth.

Warmth.

Somewhere along the line Lan Fan experiences a curious sensation as of floating on a lake, or as of floating on the sea. In the shallow eddies of the Longlei, the Dragon’s Tears. With her head tipped back and her arms and legs extended to paddle herself parsimoniously through the waters.

Calm. Strength. Honour.

Slowly she draws herself up to a seated position. Her wrappings nestle tightly against her chest. Pushing the jacket forward onto the bed, she observes the pattern of wrinkles that form in the gold and white. She brings the fabric up to her nose.

She inhales.

Breathes.

When she catches the scent she can name the notes that harmonise together into her prince, into her Emperor: The ink of countless assignments of paperwork—and the sugary powder of filched sweets and more recently Winry’s white-frosted apple pie—and the sweat of sparring and running and laughing and taking life in stride—and the faint acridity of the polish which he meticulously rubs into the shimmery-silver blade of his sword and brushes through his hair to thicken the phoenix tail and set the spiky bangs that cover his right eye—and the mustiness of hay and horses and oiled leather saddles from the times she’s convinced him to go riding through the imperial forests with her, wild and swift as the gods of the wind that propel them forward—and the smoky ash of fireworks and sparklers cast off by the participants of the block party from those few days ago—and the saltiness of blood, not fresh by any sense but residual from the multitudes of wounds and wars that this jacket has seen, so many that the jacket will never properly wash out its memories, its tears, and its grief—and—and— _and_ —

 _Ling_.

Paninya and Winry’s voice settle into the drums of her ears. Her lips still tingle from the kiss. From _the_ kiss, from the kiss from Paninya, the one that in a curious manner of speaking has freed her.

Because Paninya did not flinch or turn away, despite Lan Fan’s existence as a _girl_ , despite Lan Fan’s existence as a _transgirl_ , despite Lan Fan’s very _existence_ , from her birth to her actions over the course of her life to the present moment wherein she stands on the very cup of trembling.

In Xing a thousand nobles and their thousands more maids, their tentacles weak yet numerous in the _chi_ , would pry them apart. But here, where Winry can freely sleep with Paninya if she wishes, where wild parties can gather in the blink of an eye and dissipate just as rapidly, where some kids can shoot fireworks off in Rush Valley just like _that_ and the world responds with laughter, maybe she can have her prince after all.

No, Amestris is not perfect. And in many ways—in the food and the holidays and the harmonious rolls of the mother tongue and the understanding of privacy and the respect for the spirits and for the dead—she vastly prefers Xing. Prefers Xing, and her southern mountains of the Dragon’s Spine, overall

Yet the heat of the summer is good for something. Of this Rush Valley summer.

She shifts to the edge of the bed and notices the space between their knees. Perhaps two centimetres or three at most.

Then she has breached the rift with a cautious movement of the leg. Her knee touches his and she can _taste_ the electricity that jolts up her spine.

Lan Fan holds the jacket like a flag of safety. It falls softly onto her thighs and crinkles over legs as well, a star so bright it cloaks their activities from the world.

“Ling,” she says, because she can. Because she _can_ , and because his name is the first peach of the harvest on her tongue. “Ling. Thank you.”

She folds the jacket cautiously into quarters, then thinks better of it and dons it as best she can: She struggles to pull the fairly flimsy fabric with one hand. Wriggling her shoulders, Lan Fan smooths both sides, taking care in particular with the material over her automail port. She rubs the flat of her palm on the stump in hesitation prior to swallowing a mouthful of air. The jacket is gentle and cool where it touches her skin, as she imagines Ling’s fingertips would be. Extending her arm she cups Ling’s hip.

Tugs him towards her.

Even asleep and settled down in the lap of the chair, he’s surprisingly light for all of the muscles thickening his frame and the unfolded height lifting him above so many in the world. Perhaps he _does_ take after the phoenix of the Yao; perhaps his bones really _are_ hollow.

Under her guidance he slides first onto her knees and then up to her thighs and into her lap, where she maneouvres him until her arm supports him in the slope of his shoulder blades and her palm cradles his hair where his messy hair has bunched around and between her fingers. His legs hang off to the floor: He’s taller than she is yet the way in which he keeps himself so folded up amid his friends, so innocent and innocuous, one might think the opposite.

“Ling.” One of the beautiful aspects of this courage, however long it lasts, is that she can say these words _however many damn times she likes_. And the universe will break and the stars will crack and land in the sea before she’ll stop.

She rocks him cautiously back and forth. Like he were spun of frail silk. He isn’t, but sometimes she looks and sees something so beautiful that she cannot believe its make of ivory and steel. The _chi_ whispers of his deepening breaths and rousing consciousness. The tendons at the backs of his knees press against her bare thighs below where her short undergarments end. “ _Good morning, Ling_ ,” she says in their Xingese, in their mother tongue.

He dusts his lashes from his cheeks and somehow with his hair mussed up and his eyelids blinking drowsily—they remind her of cats’ eyes, dark and vibrant and relentlessly inquisitive—he still looks gorgeous, as if no matter what or how he elected to present himself, he would nonetheless look wrought of gold and ebony. For some strange reason the thought curves her lips into a smile.

Sleepily, Ling turns his head towards her; she observes his mouth slowly blossom into an _O_. “Lan Fan,” he whispers.

“Yes, my lord?” But now her smile has widened and she can sense the laugh lines around her eyes, mirrored in the lines around his. “This one has a small if urgent favour to ask of you, my lord.”

His fingers dig into her right knee and the expanse of her thigh above the start of the linen. A mixture of amusement and concern leak outwards from the rim of the _chi_ leashed at his chest. “And what might this one want, then?” He’s positively _vibrating_ in his excitement; she can’t help but laugh.

Testing the unfamiliar mirth with which she’s become so much more familiar since the start of her stay in Rush Valley, Lan Fan rests her chin on his shoulder. Bravery, just as unfamiliar, courses through her. She would recognise the bravery of battle as an old friend, or the bravery of suffering whatever pain she wished.

But _this_ bravery, out of everything she has tempered in the flames, is the one that runs through her veins and congeals in her lower stomach to settle there, a cool flicker of a spark, of a match waiting for the kindling.

Lan Fan steels herself, imagines her spine replaced with a sharpened sword. “This one would like a kiss.”

At the mere suggestion his face is set _aglow_ and she struggles against the immediate desire to hide hers in her—in her nonexistent collar. In the high collar of the jacket, maybe. But no: bending her neck would send the blade through her skin. She must face, like any challenge, head on.

His eyelids at a tempting half-mast that widen and darken his eyes with a curious combination of emotions Lan Fan cannot name, Ling leans in to kiss her. She snags the bandages laced around his abdomen with her index and middle fingers, slings him back, and keeps him there, suspended by two fingers of her hand.

“This one,” she repeats, “would like to kiss _you_.”

He slows. Her grip on his She can tell from the quirking of the corners of his mouth that he’s desperately, _desperately_ trying to suppress his laughter. “Ah. This one can have her way, then, if she so chooses. You know, Ninya taught me a saying in Aerugish. Something like _mi casa es su casa_. What’s mine—” He chokes off a chuckle, not unkindly but brindling with an inescapable joy. “—is yours, Lan Fan.”

She cranes her neck up and he hunches down, their height difference emphasised by his position in her lap, but somewhere in-between with the trace fumbling of bodies that don’t quite yet know how to fit in with one another, she cracks her nose against this—remembers Paninya—and the two of them break down into fits of laughter. And the fact that they can laugh at a time like this—

Her kiss with Paninya, she thinks suddenly, preparing for her this moment. Because if Paninya could take it so well, then _surely_ Ling will.

She lets go of his back to grab his chin, his lower jaw clenched in her fingers. Teetering he wheels to steady himself even as she draws him downwards on her territory to find the junction of their mouths.

Lan Fan feels his tongue first, hot and wet on her lower lip, and then the rest of him, lips soft and pliable and opening to her demands like the blooming petals of the flower. He trembles in her lap to keep from falling, his nails dug into her skin. Tightening her force on his jaw, she pushes him away just enough that she can nip his lower lip, can leave a mark on the Emperor’s sacred flesh, before she parts them whole with a soft _pop_.

Quiet.

Ling’s arms slip around her shoulders, and she doesn’t know whether to laugh, or cry, or both.


End file.
